AppActivate Function: ProcessID xxxx not found

[Rich69]

Hi all,

I have created this sub to open a DOS-Box and enter a command, but the function AppActivate is giving me problems: it cannot find the ProcessID:

Public Sub Command1_Click()
Dim retPointerID As Integer
Dim SendKeys As String
retPointerID = Shell("c:\winnt\system32\cmd.exe")
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(500)
AppActivate("retPointerID")

SendKeys = "mkdir abcde"

SendKeys = "{ENTER}"

'close dos window:
'SendKeys("Exit", True)
'SendKeys("{ENTER}", True)
End Sub

Now my questions are: (1) Can you use AppActivate to open up an DOS box and execute commands, or (2) can I bypass the ProcessID thing by using another function like Application.Start?

Apologies if I am unclear; I am quite new to VB and programming and have already figured out some things with the help of already posted messages in this forum but I cannot find an answer to tackle this one.

Basically what I am trying to create is an executable that opens a DOS-box, starts gzip to zip a data file, then start Secure FTP to put that file on a remote server...so I thought let's start simple and cover the basics first

Thanks very much in advance for your advice!

[Shuja Ali]

Welcome to CG. I would use Console Applications to accomplish any task that needs to be done from the command prompt.
AppActivate function takes the ProcessID as a parameter and the processID should be integer. The parameter you are passing to it is a string with values as "ProcessID" and not the processID that was returned by Shell. So you should remove the quotes from AppActivate call. like this AppActivate(retPointerID) If you are new to VB then these samples from MS would be of great help. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=08e3d5f8-033d-420b-a3b1-3074505c03f3&displaylang=en
(1) Can you use AppActivate to open up an DOS box and execute commands You could, but then it would be better to use a console application rather than using old style of VB 6.0 coding. Take a look at the samples that are there in the above link.
can I bypass the ProcessID thing by using another function like Application.Start?
As I said you could use Console Applications rather than Windows Forms application to achieve what you are trying to do.